Free Under the Boardwalk: A Dazzling Collection of All New Summertime Love Stories by Geralyn Dawson

full force. At traffic court that day, a woman totally lost it and tried to get out of paying a speeding ticket by holding the judge hostage. Why anyone in her right mind would want to trade a simple fine of fifty bucks for a felony charge was beyond Jackson. Getting the courthouse settled down took several hours out of his day, hours when he needed to be somewhere else.
    He got home at midnight that night, tired and disgruntled and aching with frustration. He wanted Lilah. He
needed
Lilah, needed the simple serenity of her, the quietness of her home that was such a contrast to his hectic days. They had known each other for such a short period of time, he wasn't certain that they had anything more than a one-night stand, brought about as much by circumstance as by mutual attraction. But he had been her first lover, her only lover; Lilah wasn't the type of woman to have a one-night stand. For her, making love meant something. It had meant something to him too, something more than any of his other love affairs.
    Lilah was special: honest, witty, with the bite of irony he enjoyed, and gutsy. She was also sexy as hell, with her well-toned, femininely muscled body and her cloud of curly hair that just begged to have his hands in it.
    Though he was her first lover, she hadn't shrank from anything he wanted to do. She had met him halfway in everything, enjoying what he did to her as much as he enjoyed doing it, and returning the favor. He couldn't imagine such uncomplicated joy ever getting boring.
    Until now, his house had suited him perfectly. It was an older house, with high ceilings and cranky plumbing, but he'd had the main bathroom completely redone, and the kitchen, not that he was much on cooking. It had just seemed like a smart thing to do. His bed was big enough for him, not like Lilah's too-short, too-narrow bed. They'd had to sleep double-decker, when they slept—not a big sacrifice. He'd liked having her sprawled on top of him, when he wasn't on top of her.
    But now his house felt… empty. And noisy. He hadn't realized until now how much noise a refrigerator made, or a water heater. The central air system blotted out the night's sounds of crickets and the occasional chirp of a bird.
    He wanted Lilah.
    He took a cold shower instead, and crawled into his big, cold, empty bed, where he lay awake, muscles aching, eyes burning with fatigue, and thought of that first searing, electric moment when he pushed into Lilah's body. That got him so hard he groaned, and he tried not to think about sex at all. But then her breasts came to mind, and he remembered the way her nipples had peaked in his mouth when he sucked her, and how she had moaned and squirmed when he went down on her.
    Sweat sheened his body, despite the air conditioning. Swearing, he got out of bed and took another cold shower. He finally got to sleep about two o'clock, only to dream erotic dreams and wake up needing, wanting, Lilah even more than before.
    At eight twenty-one in the morning, Thaniel Vargas's body was found floating in the river. He was easily identified because his wallet was still stuffed in his jeans pocket, along with a can of chewing tobacco. If it hadn't been for his wallet, his own mother would have been hard pressed to identify him, because he'd been shot in the face with a shotgun.
    "I don't think he's been dead long," the coroner said, standing beside Jackson as the body was wrapped and loaded in a meat wagon. "The turtles and fish hadn't been at him much. As fast as the river's flowing, the current would have kept him on the surface, plus that dead branch his arm was tangled in gave him added buoyancy."
    "How long?"
    "It's just a guess, Jackson. I'd say… twelve hours or so. Hard to tell, when they've been in the water. But he was last seen night before last, so it couldn't have been much longer than half a day."
    Jackson stared at the river, a sick feeling shredding his guts into confetti as he thought this through. He plainly remembered